O'Hagan murder brings call to act against gunmen

Saturday 29 September 2001 21.10 EDT
First published on Saturday 29 September 2001 21.10 EDT

The Government was under pressure last night to declare the Loyalist Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association ceasefires over following the murder of a journalist in Northern Ireland.

Martin O'Hagan became the first reporter ever to be killed by paramilitaries in the province after gunmen believed to be linked to the LVF shot him dead in front of his wife on Friday night.

O'Hagan had been threatened many times before. Last week a well-known loyalist told him: 'We have you clocked walking up and down this street.'

In 1992, the reporter received a chilling warning from Billy Wright, then a senior member of the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Wright, who went on to lead the LVF, was nicknamed 'King Rat' by O'Hagan. He told the journalist 'what happens to me or my family will happen to you and yours tenfold'.

Associates of Wright, who was later shot dead by republicans in the Maze prison, never forgot his 'murderous hostility' towards the journalist.

O'Hagan's murder poses a direct challenge to Prime Minister Tony Blair and his war against global terrorism. MPs as well as colleagues of O'Hagan said a crackdown on the terrorists responsible would have to follow.

The victim seemed to have known his killers. According to his wife, Mairie, who witnessed the shooting, the journalist cried out: 'It's Mackers' - just as a gunman leaned out of the car to fire on the couple at 10.30pm.

The O'Hagans were on their way home after an evening at a pub in the town. The vehicle used in the attack, a silver Ford Orion, was found burnt-out on the nearby loyalist Mourneview estate. The 51-year-old father of three girls died at the scene.

The Irish Foreign Minister, Brian Cowen, described the killing as 'a deeply shocking and cynical act'.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble challenged Northern Ireland Secretary Dr John Reid to state if the LVF ceasefire had been broken. RUC and loyalist sources believe the LVF team came from Lurgan and Dungannon.

The LVF has been officially on ceasefire since May 1998 and its prisoners have been freed early under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Any breach of their ceasefire could mean a return to jail.

The terror group used a cover name, the Red Hand Defenders, to admit responsibility for the murder at Tandragee Road, close to O'Hagan's Lurgan home.

All loyalist terrorists have used the Red Hand Defenders as a nom de guerre when attacking Catholics or each other. It means they can maintain the official fiction their ceasefires are intact.

Speaking in Berlin yesterday, Trimble, whose constituency includes Lurgan, said: 'There is an onus on the RUC chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan to give John Reid the necessary advice so the Secretary of State can act against those who are breaching their ceasefires. So far Sir Ronnie has failed to do so.'

Flanagan declined requests yesterday to be interviewed but senior RUC officers said they were convinced it was the LVF. Security sources said they had two chief suspects.

There was a sense of deep shock among O'Hagan's colleagues at the Sunday World 's northern office in Belfast yesterday.

Jim McDowell, the paper's northern editor, said: 'I am angry, I am sore and my heart is breaking for him and that wee family down there. What the hell did these people think they are going to achieve?'